There are books in a writer’s life that gather all their previous themes and explorations in a great act of creative culmination, which both surpasses what had gone before and makes it more clear. We Do Not Part is one of those books. Published last year in Swedish translation, it helped to secure Korean writer Han Kang the 2024 Nobel prize in literature.
Those who know Han’s work will recognise previous themes and methods here. Like the eponymous character in The Vegetarian, the narrator of We Do Not Part, Kyungha, is fragile and resilient. She finds it hard to sleep or eat, suffers from summer heat and winter cold, and endures terrible physical suffering for reasons that can be hard to understand. Both stories feature video artists, sisterly bonds, and nightmares of murder and bloodshed set in Korean woodlands.
